Lillian Carranza and the $4 Million LAPD Harassment Verdict

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded retired LAPD Commander Lillian Carranza $4 million in September 2022, finding that the Los Angeles Police Department failed to stop officers from circulating a digitally altered topless photo made to resemble her. The California Court of Appeal affirmed the verdict in May 2025, and the ruling is now cited as a significant precedent on indirect sexual harassment in California workplaces. The Lillian Carranza LAPD harassment verdict stands as one of the largest single-plaintiff awards against the department in recent years.¹²

The Doctored Photo

In late 2018, someone inside the LAPD took a photograph of a topless woman, digitally altered it to resemble Carranza, and sent it out electronically. It spread. The department’s own internal investigation later identified 10 to 13 people who had seen the image and documented four separate incidents of officers viewing or discussing it at the Staples Center, Mission Station, and Topanga Community Station. On-duty officers were observed looking at the photo on cellphones and making lewd comments. The employee who first circulated the image was never identified.²¹

How the LAPD Responded

Carranza filed a formal complaint through the department’s MyVoiceLA system in November 2018. She repeatedly asked Chief Michel Moore to send a department-wide notice clarifying that the photo was not of her and ordering employees to stop sharing it. Moore refused, saying such a notice would cause further embarrassment and could disrupt the pending investigation.²

An internal affairs investigator was not assigned until more than two weeks after the complaint. The probe focused on identifying the person who first circulated the image rather than the officers who later possessed or forwarded it. In a December 2018 email, Carranza wrote that “the investigator appeared confused as to how to proceed with the investigation.” By August 2019, an internal adjudication sustained the allegation that an unknown employee had circulated the image and classified the conduct as “serious misconduct.” No one was disciplined, because the department said it could not identify the source.²

The Toll on Carranza

Carranza was hospitalized on Christmas Eve 2018 with severe high blood pressure and what she described as suicidal ideation. Her attorney, Greg Smith, told jurors her blood pressure “skyrocketed so high” that she required emergency care, and doctors subsequently doubled her blood pressure medication.³ She was diagnosed with major depressive disorder.⁴ She testified to feelings of “helplessness, abandonment and betrayal” and said she felt “gaslighted” by the department. At work, she described constant anxiety, wondering whether colleagues looking at their phones were viewing the image.⁵

The $4 Million Verdict

Carranza filed suit in January 2019, asserting a single cause of action for hostile work environment due to sexual harassment under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. After a seven-day trial in September 2022, the jury awarded her $4 million in noneconomic damages: $1.5 million for past emotional distress and $2.5 million for future pain and suffering. The trial court also awarded $610,050 in attorney fees and $31,450 in expert witness fees.¹²

The Appeal and Its Legal Significance

The City of Los Angeles appealed, arguing that Carranza had not experienced the harassment directly and that the conduct was neither severe nor pervasive enough to qualify as a hostile work environment. The city also sought a new trial on grounds of alleged juror misconduct, including claims that jurors improperly discussed the impact of attorney fees and taxes on the award and that one juror displayed bias against the LAPD.²

On May 23, 2025, the California Court of Appeal (Second District) affirmed the judgment in full. The court rejected the city’s argument that “extreme” or “hellish” conditions were required, citing California Government Code section 12923, which clarifies that a single sufficiently offensive incident can create a hostile environment. The ruling established that a plaintiff does not need to personally witness the harassment to have a valid claim; knowledge that sexualized images are circulating among colleagues through a “chain of interpersonal interactions” is enough. The decision has since been cited as a significant precedent in California employment law for expanding what counts as actionable indirect harassment under FEHA.²

Who Lillian Carranza Is

Carranza served approximately 33 years with the LAPD before retiring in 2025.⁶ She was promoted to captain in 2012 and led several high-profile commands, including the Commercial Crimes Division, which had roughly 100 employees, and the Gang and Narcotics Division.¹ She was promoted to commander in 2023 and assigned to the LAPD’s Operations-Central Bureau as assistant commanding officer, overseeing nearly 800,000 residents across 64 square miles covering the Central, Hollenbeck, Rampart, Newton, and Northeast patrol areas and the bureau’s Homicide Unit.⁷

Carranza’s Other Suits Against the LAPD

The harassment case was not Carranza’s only legal fight with the department. In January 2018, she filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles alleging that the LAPD systematically misclassified violent crimes to make its statistics look better. She said she had identified the pattern over four years, beginning in the Foothill area in 2014 and later in the Pacific, Central, Hollenbeck, and Mission divisions, where aggravated assaults were being reclassified as less serious offenses by roughly 10 percent.⁸⁹

Her allegations landed in a department with a documented history of the problem. A 2015 audit by the inspector general confirmed the misclassification of more than 25,000 aggravated assaults from 2008 to 2014, attributing the errors to “systematic issues, procedural deficiencies” and department-wide misconceptions.⁸ Carranza alleged that after a November 2017 news conference publicizing her findings, the department retaliated by passing her over for promotion, denying her training, ostracizing her at staff meetings, and sending her to a command post for the December 2017 Creek fire where she was exposed to smoke and carcinogens for 10 to 14 hours a day over three days. Then-Chief Charlie Beck called her claims “not only lies, they’re damn lies.” On December 16, 2019, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that Carranza “did not engage in a protected activity, and as such, did not blow any whistle.”⁹

Earlier, in October 2014, Carranza filed a lawsuit alleging she had been denied promotions in retaliation for her decisions on two Board of Rights hearings, including one in which she recommended suspension rather than termination and another in which she returned a not-guilty verdict. She dropped the suit in January 2015 under circumstances that are not clear from court records.¹⁰

1
NBC Los Angeles. Jury Awards LAPD Captain $4 Million Over Internal Nude Photo Distribution
2
Findlaw. Carranza v. City of Los Angeles
3
AOL News. LAPD Captain Gaslighted Over Fake Nude Photo
4
Los Angeles Times. LAPD Chief Admits He Didn’t Address Fake Nude Photo of Captain
5
LA Mag. Captain Says She Felt Gaslighted by LAPD Over Concerns About Fake Photo
6
Eventbrite. Commander Lillian L. Carranza Retirement Luncheon
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CALOnews. Will Mayor Bass Appoint the First Latino Police Chief
8
Los Angeles Times. LAPD Captain Claims Department Doctored Crime Statistics
9
NBC Los Angeles. Judge Dismisses LAPD Captain’s Suit Over Alleged Crime Underreporting
10
Daily News. LAPD Captain Seeks Personnel Records of Pair Promoted Over Her